. right now. thousands of people in northeast texas have been forced from their homes by flood waters. authorities have evacuated parts of wichita falls, texas, which has seen record rainfall this months. more rain is in the forecast for the next three days. nbc s mark potter is live in wichita falls, texas, standing in that flooding. please take us through what s going on down there. i m standing on the edge of the flooding. we are seeing flood waters coming up in this area. you can see the waters here. this is about a half mile from the downtown area. normally this is a bike path you would bike through. but now the waters are here. the river itself the river bank is on the other side of the trees. the water is ever slowly coming up. this isn t a raging flood, it is coming up. the fear is it will be coming up into houses. hundreds of people have been
and lightning injuring at least four people near houston. and a frightening tale from taylor russell. taylor, her sister and some friends, standing on the edge of a swollen creek during monday s heavy rains in pennsylvania, when taylor suddenly fell in. i didn t know there was a drop in the ground there. and i went under. and was trying to get up. and my friends tried helping me. and they couldn t. reporter: helpless, the group watching, as taylor was swept underground for a half-mile through a drainpipe, holding her breath the whole time, certain she was going to die. taylor made it out with only bumps and bruises. we may see stories like that again. flood watches for parts of texas and oklahoma. look at that bull s eye in southeastern oklahoma. big rains possible through saturday, three to five inches. ginger zee, abc news, new york. a man accused of breaking into a cape cod home by president john f. kennedy is now in a mental health facility. police say james lacroix
what is the thrill of this, tom? it s exhilarating. there is nothing in the world like standing on the edge and knowing that it might be the last thing you ever do on the planet. bill: the last thing. it really, it brings all of your focus, it requires all of your skill, dedication, and daring. it is a very good challenge. bill: what is the danger here? for you, if you do not have a backup chute? or do you? no. when we base jump, we jump with just one parachute. when you sky dive, you take two parachutes, you have a lot more time, you re jumping in a wide open area, you re landing over top of an open area, you have, just, you know, a lot more margin for error. on a base jump you only have one parachute and a limited amount of time to make it work properly. sam packed his parachute correctly and what a parachute deploys all we need is air and time for it
30,000 wounded warriors, many of whom still struggle with serious, life-altering injuries. reporter: it s estimated more than 150,000 iraqis lost their lives in the war. most of them civilians. 16 days to go before the typical american worker gets hit with $1,000 a year tax increase. there are some signs now republicans, democrats, might, might break their log jam over extending the payroll tax cut. democratic source says that president obama may drop his plan for a millionaire surtax to cover the cost of extending it. republicans oppose any new taxes on the wealthy. they would like to pay for the extension primarily by freezing ped ral pay. mitt romney rolling out an aggressive new strategy to stop newt gingrich. romney, in a flurry of interviews, says gingrich and his policy ideas are zany. that s right. he says we don t need zany in a president. he labels gingrich an unreliable conservative. gingrich climbed to the top of national presidential polls after herman cain
he s already taken the political damage. now he s got to see if he can salvage some kind of political benefit. imagine if he walked away from the debate and left those democrats on capitol hill who voted for this thing standing on the edge of a cliff. they would never trust him again and would have a hard time getting anything done. gloria, this does set up this showdown with republicans, who are already claiming that democrats are just abusing their power. how ugly do you expect it to get? i heard what senator thune was saying earlier, listen in the senate they can amend this in unlimited ways, they can vote democrats to vote time and time again, and my bet is they ll take a lot of time putting democrats on the spot on this. the other interesting aspect to all of this, campbell, is that the house and senate democrats don t trust each other.